


castling

by nebulousviolet



Category: H.I.V.E. Series - Mark Walden
Genre: Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, One Shot, a love letter to chess, chess as a metaphor but also just as The Game, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:54:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27213733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulousviolet/pseuds/nebulousviolet
Summary: “Chess,” Otto grits out, “is a silent game.”Shelby grins at him, all teeth. “Excellent.”
Relationships: Otto Malpense & Natalya | Raven, Otto Malpense & Shelby Trinity
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	castling

**Author's Note:**

> this is inspired by three things: the new netflix show the queen's gambit, a scene from my shelby character study that i published a few weeks ago, and my own personal experiences with chess. i was very, very lucky to go to a primary school that was trialling a chess in schools program while i was there, and if i think about it i can still smell the VERY distinctive plastic mats we used to play on every tuesday afternoon. i havent played properly in years (although while writing this i did play a few online matches against the computer...it's not the same), but it's still a big part of my childhood (i even went to chess day camps in the summer lol). plus, being good at chess is like, peak child prodigy, and while i was never any good, i knew several people who were incredible (they'd go to london and spain for chess competitions with school), and i figured that that is very On Brand for kid genius malpense <33 anyway i hope u enjoy!!

There are three battered chess sets at St. Sebastian’s, and only one of them still has all the pieces - the other two have laminated pieces of card with the names of what they are supposed to represent printed haphazardly on top, and it technically works but it isn’t really the same. Otto Malpense teaches himself how to play via stringent observation at the age of four, wins his first regional title at five, and by six there isn’t a budget for him to enter the national contests. But he’s good, he knows that much, and everyone else knows it, too. Nobody at the orphanage will play him. So Otto plays himself, over and over, until his priorities switch from chess to bigger and better things, and the third chess set with its pieces carefully intact is eventually passed down to someone else.

* * *

“You’d like it,” he tells Raven, when he catches her watching him in the safehouse. She has all kinds of board games in each one, most of them untouched; if he had to bet, he’d say they were Nero’s doing and not her own. “It’s a war game.”

“Usually I’m not the one planning strategy,” Raven says silkily, although in the time that Otto has known her, the opposite has been true. “Just carrying it out.”

“You get to do both,” he says. She tilts her head, watches him reset the board and start as white. “White always makes the first move,” he explains, and considers the pieces before him carefully. “A lot of people say that you can’t get rid of that advantage. But I don’t know,” he shrugs, checks white, moves in for an easy checkmate. He flicks white’s king down carelessly. “I think there’s something to be said for overcoming the odds.”

Raven closes her eyes, smiles slightly. “You would,” she says.

* * *

Truth be told, he only starts playing chess at H.I.V.E because there’s little else to do between planning escape routes; the work, while uncomfortably enjoyable, is easy, and Wing spends most of his evenings in the dojo, leaving Otto alone. When he goes to the library and sees the boxes of chess sets instead, just sitting there on the counter, it’s a childish impulse that he can’t bother to repress. So he plays. And tries not to think about the fact that, in another life, being good at chess might’ve been the most unusual thing about him and not the least.

It’s a few months in when Shelby Trinity confronts him, stepping out from behind a bookshelf and pulling up a chair without asking. They might be in on an escape plan together, but that doesn’t mean they _talk;_ she sticks close to Laura, and spends most of their meetings shooting down Otto’s every suggestion with a sickly-sweet smile. The thing about Shelby is that he just can’t get a read on her. Maybe that’s why it surprises him so much when she crosses her arms over her chest, leans back in her seat, and says, “I want to play.”

“I don’t play other people,” Otto says flatly. It’s a half-lie - he used to, once upon a time, but he’s changed so much since then that he thinks he can hardly be considered the same person. “Sorry.”  
  
“What, do you not think I’m good enough for you?” Shelby accuses. Something dangerous is sparking in the blue of her eyes. “You know, I put up with you in class because Laura clearly sees something I don’t, but you’re kind of an asshole, you know that, huh?”

Otto’s temper flares. “Do you even know the rules?”

  
“I’m a fast learner,” Shelby says. “And I’ve been watching you for the past two weeks. Can’t be that hard, right?”

“It’s-”

“I know what chess is,” Shelby says with an eye roll. “You’re so edgy, did you know that? Clearly all that playing isn’t helping you calm down any.”

“Chess,” Otto grits out, “is a silent game.”  
  
Shelby grins at him, all teeth. “Excellent.”

* * *

Shelby isn’t even that bad a player; she puts up more of a challenge than half of the adults that Otto has played, and he tells her this when he beats her in two dozen moves and her jaw clenches. “It’s good that I’m better than you,” he adds. “It’s the only way you’re going to improve.”

“If I was as good as you,” Shelby says, turning the board so that she’s white this time and resetting the pieces, “I never would’ve had to become the Wraith.”  
  


He knows very little about Shelby, all things considered, and he takes the information offered and stores it away somewhere safe. “Try playing Laura sometime,” he suggests. “It might put things into perspective.”

“Maybe,” Shelby says, but she doesn’t sound all that enthused. “I’m aiming for fifty, this time.”  
  


She means the number of moves it takes for him to beat her. He laughs. “You’re on.”  
  


* * *

  
  
“Nero has a chess set,” Raven says conversationally, polishing her katanas as he sets up the board. He’s taken to replaying his old matches with Shelby, seeing where he can cut down the number of moves it takes to get her in check. He wonders if she’s been practicing, back at H.I.V.E. Probably not. Neither Wing nor Franz know how, and he can’t picture her with a chess set by herself, the way he used to play. “Made of diamond.”

“Seems excessive,” Otto mumbles, reconstructing a game he played with her just weeks before the Hunt. It’s his favourite to come back to - it’s the closest Shelby has ever gotten to beating him, even if she hadn’t known it at the time. The thing is, it doesn’t surprise him that Nero owns something like that, but Otto just doesn’t see the _point_. Chess is a game meant to be played, not observed; Shelby, with her armful of books on openings and pawn endings and her multi-year long losing streak, can attest to that. The moment before a victory is almost always better than the moment after. In that way, Otto can understand why Shelby might never have had to resort to being a jewel thief at all, had she learned to play a little younger.

“Funny,” Raven says, in that voice of hers that suggests it isn’t funny at all. “That’s exactly what I said.”  
  
Again, Otto thinks that Raven would like chess. Perhaps, deep down, he even knows it.

* * *

Shelby doesn’t ever play Laura, but she plays Lucy, sometimes. She tells Otto this when he’s trying to figure out what to do with his rook - Shelby has gotten very good at cornering his favourite pieces, determined to piss him off into a worse form - because, despite how quickly Shelby has picked up on every other rule in the book, she’s not a big believer in silence. “It was nice to win for once,” she says, fidgets with the end of a braid. “She seemed surprised.”

“Shut up,” Otto says, then, upon finally making his move, continues, “I told you that you were decent.”

“It was hard to believe with you kicking my ass every week,” Shelby rolls her eyes. She takes his pawn with her knight, then groans. “I’ve just screwed myself, haven’t I?”

“A little bit,” he admits, and beats her three moves later. “But the fact that you knew-”

“Is improvement, blah blah blah,” she cuts him off with a wave of her hand. “That was a stupid mistake. I’ll get you next time, Malpense.”  
  
She says that at the end of every game.

* * *

  
  


He asks Lucy if she’d like a match, once, and she shakes her head furiously, blushing.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she says, “but you and Shelby - you’re so intense about everything. I play just to have fun - to relax. Somehow I don’t think I’d have much fun with you beating me in ten minutes flat.”  
  
He hasn’t really thought of it like that before. For Otto, the fun comes out of the competition. He knows Shelby’s the same. The idea of _relaxation_ is about as foreign to him as a mother and father.

“The offer’s always open,” he says instead, and she smiles at him, relieved.

“Sure,” she says. “Maybe we could hang out and do something else, instead?”

* * *

“I think you’ll like this one,” he tells Raven, who obediently abandons her computer to peer over at the chess board. He’s only a few moves into the game, and the opportunity is just right. “It’s called castling.”

“Castling,” she repeats drolly. “Do tell.”

“You take the king,” he says, and demonstrates - he’s castling kingside for black, purely for speed rather than effectiveness - “and you move him two squares, into the corner. And then you take the rook and move it to where the king just crossed. It’s the only time in the game when the king can move more than one square, and when you can move two pieces at once.”

“Huh,” Raven says. She reaches out, as if to touch the piece, and then stops. “Rook. Like the bird?”

“I suppose,” Otto says. “There’s grandmasters who want to abolish it, you know. They say it makes the game too susceptible to a draw, to have the king tucked away like that. But I don’t know,” he shrugs, examining the layout. “It’s not always for defensive reasons. There’s no better way to get the rook out onto the rest of the board, don’t you think?”

“You’d have to ask someone who knows the rules,” Raven says. The corner of her mouth tugs up. “It’s a funny little game. Perhaps when all this is over, I'll get to watch you play against someone who isn’t yourself.”  
  
“I’d win,” Otto says immediately.

“Of course,” Raven says. She gives one last glance down at the chessboard. “Still. Until then.”


End file.
